Just streamed the series on Netflix over the weekend...quite enjoyed it. They put together a very good ensemble cast that played off one another rather well throughout the 5 seasons. Sure there were some hiccups now and again...characters appearing then vanishing without notice or trace...lol...and on a police drama too ;P. It gives a more realistic view of the police that make up the squads in the UK, 'real' people with 'real' lives mucking up the works and managing somehow to keep all the balls in the air. DCI Lewis is as 'real' as it gets being a full time cop and mom...never quite getting it all right...but life is messy and this drama really brings home that reality. The story lines played out as well as any drama on TV British or US. Sorry to see it didn't survive a while longer...I grew to really like the characters and would have liked to see where they got on to. :) Well worth a watch if you like police dramas...Brits got this spot on I think.
17 Reviews
good series
blanche-223 June 2013
Thanks to the show "Jonathan Creek," I became a fan of Caroline Quentin. She stars in "Blue Murder," a British series about a DCI Janine Lewis (Quentin) as she works police cases and deals with her chaotic private life as not only a single mom, but the mother of a new baby. The series begins when she's pregnant with her last child, and her husband Pete (Joe Tucker) has already taken off with another woman, though he and Janine haven't actually gotten a divorce. Fortunately, at least for the first years of the series, Tom is around to babysit. In the last year he and his wife move to Spain.
Janine's team consists of Ian Kelsey (Richard Mayne), with whom she has an on again/off again relationship, DS Butchers (Paul Laughlin) and DS Shap (Nicholas Murchie), all of whom create very full characters and make a good ensemble. The cases are interesting and make for good drama.
I don't think the ensemble work comes anywhere near "NCIS" or "The Closer" but over time, we get to know the team. The team doesn't have the humor and the characters don't have the individual focus of the above-mentioned shows; the emphasis is very much on its star, her family, and to a lesser extent Ian.
Really enjoyable and well-acted; sorry this didn't go longer, but what there was, was very good.
Janine's team consists of Ian Kelsey (Richard Mayne), with whom she has an on again/off again relationship, DS Butchers (Paul Laughlin) and DS Shap (Nicholas Murchie), all of whom create very full characters and make a good ensemble. The cases are interesting and make for good drama.
I don't think the ensemble work comes anywhere near "NCIS" or "The Closer" but over time, we get to know the team. The team doesn't have the humor and the characters don't have the individual focus of the above-mentioned shows; the emphasis is very much on its star, her family, and to a lesser extent Ian.
Really enjoyable and well-acted; sorry this didn't go longer, but what there was, was very good.
Nice teamwork
gridoon202423 September 2011
Warning: Spoilers
"Blue Murder" is a good, if not phenomenal, British police series which ran from 2003 to 2009 (5 seasons all in all). The main character is Detective Chief Inspector Janine Lewis, of the Manchester Police, who has a messy home life (separated from her husband, she's raising her 4 kids on her own) and a busy career (she is in charge of murder investigations). The rest of her team consists of Detectives Richard, Butchers, Shap, and others who come and go as the series moves on; the regulars make a good team, and all the men respect their female boss. The Manchester locations give this series a feeling of freshness, the characters are all believable and well-played (I think Nicholas Murchie may be the best as the cynical Shap), and the cases themselves are 90% of the time unpredictable and engaging. By the 5th season, the series does start to feel a bit formulaic, however the very last episode, the two-parter "Private Sins", suggests some ways that might have shaken up the formula, if the series had been allowed to continue for a 6th season. My favorite episode, and a great representative of how complex and twisted the mysteries could get, is "Up In Smoke" from Season 2. Some episodes have terrific titles - how can you not love "Not A Matter Of Life And Death"? One minor (?) complaint, though: some supporting characters are built up as important, then disappear without a trace.
Pretty good
chvygrl-5856714 January 2019
Spicy!
m_winship10 May 2019
British cop series; quite entertaining IMHO! You'll like this a lot as it's quite original and spicy too. Series ran from 2003 through 1008? For about five seasons I think. It's full of intelligent and cohesive dialogue and detective processes. You'll being paying attention as each episode runs in many sub plots and clued up mysteries at once. Enjoy on Amazon, and tell me what you think! ? Murf
Better Than the Average Rating
aphillips-430574 February 2019
My wife and I were pleasantly surprised by this detective series based on the reviews. It was definitely a well-acted and scripted detective show that kept you guessing about who did it. However, it was a little uneven with some great episodes and some that were implausible (e.g., the final episode). Also, several episodes were incredibly sad. I want to give it 7.5, but can't so it gets a 7.0. I'm sorry they didn't make more than 5 seasons.
Blue Murder deserves more attention
aimee-4680330 March 2021
Discovered this gem during pandemic 2021. It is witty and smart. The actors are excellent. Caroline Quentin & Ian Kelsey have a chemistry and express so much through body language and facial expressions. The only downside is that Blue Murder didn't have a consistent format/formula/run time so the series didn't flow the way others do.
Solid Series
lgsullivan-187289 December 2021
Loved the show. Good stories, great characters. Janine is great - watching her balance home life with police work is inspiring. Lots of humor lightens the series in a good way. Richard, Butchers, Sharp - also make the show worth watching. I wish there were more seasons!
Easy to watch.
ronaldalamascus-905061 September 2019
Like able characters with little violence or gratuitous sex or gender propaganda. Simple stories that don't require a lot of effort to keep up but are still interesting and entertaining. A complex, dark, moody theme is not always necessary for good viewing and I for one, am sick of all the politically correct crap being shoved down my throat at every turn. If a writer, producer, director, or actor has an agenda of which they want to dwell or pontificate, let them do so on their own time. I have lost all patience with the nonsense.
A series that doesn't know what it is
calmeilles28 June 2023
This is a series that should have all the advantages with excellent casting and good production values yet it start out not knowing what it is supposed to be or where it is going. The writers and/or the producers seem to think that if it cannot be outright comedic it must at least have moments of light relief. The beginning feels as if it is transparently a vehicle for Caroline Quentin, based perhaps on her long running appearance in Jonathan Creek but that itself is disrespectful of her undoubted skill as an actor.
Only by season 4 does it finally settle down to be serious drama without the interpolated moments of jollity to tell excellent stories told with very fine performances across the cast.
Having achieved that it throws much of it away in the last season by paring the story-lines and episode length down to a mean 45 minutes (not counting advertising). Even the last story presented over the last two episodes fails to recapture the depths of the previous season and a side plot concerning DCI Janine Lewis's family that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy for her fails to do so by dragging up all the single mum woman police officer tropes on offer.
So close to being good it sabotages itself.
Only by season 4 does it finally settle down to be serious drama without the interpolated moments of jollity to tell excellent stories told with very fine performances across the cast.
Having achieved that it throws much of it away in the last season by paring the story-lines and episode length down to a mean 45 minutes (not counting advertising). Even the last story presented over the last two episodes fails to recapture the depths of the previous season and a side plot concerning DCI Janine Lewis's family that is obviously designed to elicit sympathy for her fails to do so by dragging up all the single mum woman police officer tropes on offer.
So close to being good it sabotages itself.
Good Police Series
m_grunsky24 October 2021
Found this on ITV Iplayer a series I had previously missed before. I thoroughly enjoyed it, great characters - Caroline Quentin as the main character is excellent as are the rest of the team. I just thought the jump from S2 to S3 seemed to miss something out. Her old boss "the lemon" had gone with a woman replacement with no explanation, her elder son seemed to have grown another head and her daughter seemed to have aged 8 years in 18 months.
A little bit sloppy and a lot fuzzy
Dr_Coulardeau6 November 2021
Warning: Spoilers
The series has a charm and an accent. Manchester speaks standard Brexit English, un-understandable on the European Continent. But with a little help from the English subtitles, you manage to go through this accentuated lingua that is not franca at all.
The charm is not so much in the family problems of this poor Janine Lewis, a woman, a mother, and a detective, who finds great apocalyptic challenges in coping with her four children, two too many at least, even in this Catholic tradition of making children like pigeons deliver a batch of babies every year. Luckily, she did not try twins or triplets., and she is a no-longer-married mother, and the alimony pays for the babysitter and the ex-husband with his new wife and his own kid, only one, seems to be cooperative. But she is in many ways nervous, often angry, brisk, and brusque with her children, understanding but always under duress from the kids. The school problems of these kids with a distant father and a mother called to multiple crime scenes at any time of day and night, of workdays and weekends, are hardly taken into account. They are always dealt with as one tip, there are maybe several tips, of one invisible iceberg, and there are definitely many. The only idea that emerges is that this broken family with these too many children is leading to all sorts of misdemeanors and other petty crimes of sorts that could and maybe can and will become serious "business" if not yet felonies.
As a detective she is imaginative, but she is unable to work by herself. She needs a team, and the team is like a punching ball for her stiffening and reinforcing her fists against the crimes of life because life is nothing but an avalanche of crimes. The crimes are often ugly but always banal. At times there is a page of poignancy that gives the crime or the characters of the crime some depth. In a farming family, the mother dies, then the son turns arsonist and kills one person by setting her caravan on fire, pretending he did not know she was there, and the father kills a girlfriend of the son's that was trying to take the son away from him. Both will end up in prison, the same prison maybe, and the same cell, why not?
What is clear is that the locals are hostile to any kind of outsiders, be they Europeans or migrants from far away, or even only plain Britishers who are not from Manchester, and Bradford might be beyond the Manchester border. That jingoistic atmosphere is perfectly irritating though it explains Brexit better than all the blah-blah-blah of all the Boris Johnsons in the world.
So welcome to Brexit Britain with their Blue Manchester United, and in Manchester, everything is blue of course, though most of them look like jingoistic greenhorns about the world in which they are supposed to be living. Still, they do not know what it might be.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
VERSION FRANÇAISE
La série a un charme et un accent. Manchester parle un anglais standard du Brexit, incompréhensible sur le continent européen. Mais avec un peu d'aide des sous-titres anglais, on arrive à passer au travers de cette lingua accentuée qui n'est pas franca du tout.
Le charme n'est pas tant dans les problèmes familiaux de cette pauvre Janine Lewis, femme, mère et détective, qui se trouve face à de grands défis apocalyptiques pour faire front à ses quatre enfants, deux de trop au moins, même dans cette tradition catholique de faire naître les enfants comme des pigeons, une fournée ou nichée de bébés chaque année. Heureusement, elle n'a pas essayé d'avoir des jumeaux ou des triplés, et elle n'est plus mariée, la pension alimentaire paie la baby-sitter et l'ex-mari, avec sa nouvelle femme et son propre enfant, un seul, semble coopérer. Mais elle est à bien des égards nerveuse, souvent en colère, vive et brusque avec ses enfants, compréhensive mais toujours sous la contrainte des enfants. Les problèmes scolaires de ces enfants dont le père est distant et la mère appelée sur de multiples scènes de crime à toute heure du jour et de la nuit, des jours ouvrables et des week-ends, sont à peine pris en compte. Ils sont toujours traités comme une pointe émergée, et il y en a peut-être plusieurs de ces pointes émergées, d'un iceberg invisible, et il y en a certainement beaucoup de ces icebergs invisibles. La seule idée qui émerge est que cette famille brisée avec ces enfants trop nombreux conduit à toutes sortes de délits et autres petits crimes de toutes sortes qui pourraient, et peut-être peuvent, ou vont devenir des "affaires" sérieuses si ce n'est pas encore des crimes.
En tant que détective, elle fait preuve d'imagination, mais elle est incapable de travailler seule. Elle a besoin d'une équipe, et l'équipe est comme un balle de frappe qui lui permet de raidir et de renforcer ses poings contre les crimes de la vie, car la vie n'est rien d'autre qu'une avalanche de crimes. Les crimes sont souvent laids mais toujours banals. Parfois, il y a une page poignante qui donne au crime ou aux personnages du crime une certaine profondeur. Dans une famille de fermiers, la mère meurt, puis le fils devient pyromane et tue une personne en mettant le feu à sa caravane, prétendant qu'il ne savait pas qu'elle était là, et le père tue une petite amie du fils qui essayait de l'éloigner de lui. Tous deux finiront en prison, la même prison peut-être, et la même cellule, pourquoi pas ?
Ce qui est clair, c'est que les habitants sont hostiles à toute forme d'étrangers, qu'il s'agisse d'Européens ou de migrants venus de loin, ou même de simples Britanniques qui ne sont pas de Manchester, et Bradford pourrait être au-delà de la frontière de Manchester. Cette atmosphère chauvine d'esprit de clocher même laïcisé est parfaitement irritante, bien qu'elle explique le Brexit mieux que tout les bla-bla-bla de tous les Boris Johnson du monde.
Bienvenue donc dans la Grande-Bretagne du Brexit et son Manchester United bleu. À Manchester, tout est bleu, bien sûr, même si la plupart des gens ressemblent à des bleus bites verts de peur écologiquement orientée devant le monde dans lequel ils sont censés vivre. Pourtant, ils ne savent pas ce que ce monde peut bien ou pourrait bien être, d'où la totale absence de bien-être dans leurs esprits chauvins.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.
The charm is not so much in the family problems of this poor Janine Lewis, a woman, a mother, and a detective, who finds great apocalyptic challenges in coping with her four children, two too many at least, even in this Catholic tradition of making children like pigeons deliver a batch of babies every year. Luckily, she did not try twins or triplets., and she is a no-longer-married mother, and the alimony pays for the babysitter and the ex-husband with his new wife and his own kid, only one, seems to be cooperative. But she is in many ways nervous, often angry, brisk, and brusque with her children, understanding but always under duress from the kids. The school problems of these kids with a distant father and a mother called to multiple crime scenes at any time of day and night, of workdays and weekends, are hardly taken into account. They are always dealt with as one tip, there are maybe several tips, of one invisible iceberg, and there are definitely many. The only idea that emerges is that this broken family with these too many children is leading to all sorts of misdemeanors and other petty crimes of sorts that could and maybe can and will become serious "business" if not yet felonies.
As a detective she is imaginative, but she is unable to work by herself. She needs a team, and the team is like a punching ball for her stiffening and reinforcing her fists against the crimes of life because life is nothing but an avalanche of crimes. The crimes are often ugly but always banal. At times there is a page of poignancy that gives the crime or the characters of the crime some depth. In a farming family, the mother dies, then the son turns arsonist and kills one person by setting her caravan on fire, pretending he did not know she was there, and the father kills a girlfriend of the son's that was trying to take the son away from him. Both will end up in prison, the same prison maybe, and the same cell, why not?
What is clear is that the locals are hostile to any kind of outsiders, be they Europeans or migrants from far away, or even only plain Britishers who are not from Manchester, and Bradford might be beyond the Manchester border. That jingoistic atmosphere is perfectly irritating though it explains Brexit better than all the blah-blah-blah of all the Boris Johnsons in the world.
So welcome to Brexit Britain with their Blue Manchester United, and in Manchester, everything is blue of course, though most of them look like jingoistic greenhorns about the world in which they are supposed to be living. Still, they do not know what it might be.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
VERSION FRANÇAISE
La série a un charme et un accent. Manchester parle un anglais standard du Brexit, incompréhensible sur le continent européen. Mais avec un peu d'aide des sous-titres anglais, on arrive à passer au travers de cette lingua accentuée qui n'est pas franca du tout.
Le charme n'est pas tant dans les problèmes familiaux de cette pauvre Janine Lewis, femme, mère et détective, qui se trouve face à de grands défis apocalyptiques pour faire front à ses quatre enfants, deux de trop au moins, même dans cette tradition catholique de faire naître les enfants comme des pigeons, une fournée ou nichée de bébés chaque année. Heureusement, elle n'a pas essayé d'avoir des jumeaux ou des triplés, et elle n'est plus mariée, la pension alimentaire paie la baby-sitter et l'ex-mari, avec sa nouvelle femme et son propre enfant, un seul, semble coopérer. Mais elle est à bien des égards nerveuse, souvent en colère, vive et brusque avec ses enfants, compréhensive mais toujours sous la contrainte des enfants. Les problèmes scolaires de ces enfants dont le père est distant et la mère appelée sur de multiples scènes de crime à toute heure du jour et de la nuit, des jours ouvrables et des week-ends, sont à peine pris en compte. Ils sont toujours traités comme une pointe émergée, et il y en a peut-être plusieurs de ces pointes émergées, d'un iceberg invisible, et il y en a certainement beaucoup de ces icebergs invisibles. La seule idée qui émerge est que cette famille brisée avec ces enfants trop nombreux conduit à toutes sortes de délits et autres petits crimes de toutes sortes qui pourraient, et peut-être peuvent, ou vont devenir des "affaires" sérieuses si ce n'est pas encore des crimes.
En tant que détective, elle fait preuve d'imagination, mais elle est incapable de travailler seule. Elle a besoin d'une équipe, et l'équipe est comme un balle de frappe qui lui permet de raidir et de renforcer ses poings contre les crimes de la vie, car la vie n'est rien d'autre qu'une avalanche de crimes. Les crimes sont souvent laids mais toujours banals. Parfois, il y a une page poignante qui donne au crime ou aux personnages du crime une certaine profondeur. Dans une famille de fermiers, la mère meurt, puis le fils devient pyromane et tue une personne en mettant le feu à sa caravane, prétendant qu'il ne savait pas qu'elle était là, et le père tue une petite amie du fils qui essayait de l'éloigner de lui. Tous deux finiront en prison, la même prison peut-être, et la même cellule, pourquoi pas ?
Ce qui est clair, c'est que les habitants sont hostiles à toute forme d'étrangers, qu'il s'agisse d'Européens ou de migrants venus de loin, ou même de simples Britanniques qui ne sont pas de Manchester, et Bradford pourrait être au-delà de la frontière de Manchester. Cette atmosphère chauvine d'esprit de clocher même laïcisé est parfaitement irritante, bien qu'elle explique le Brexit mieux que tout les bla-bla-bla de tous les Boris Johnson du monde.
Bienvenue donc dans la Grande-Bretagne du Brexit et son Manchester United bleu. À Manchester, tout est bleu, bien sûr, même si la plupart des gens ressemblent à des bleus bites verts de peur écologiquement orientée devant le monde dans lequel ils sont censés vivre. Pourtant, ils ne savent pas ce que ce monde peut bien ou pourrait bien être, d'où la totale absence de bien-être dans leurs esprits chauvins.
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU.
GOOD CAST, GOOD STORIES, CHARACTERS WELL DEVELOPED
daftrancenergy16 January 2024
I started to watch this a few times and kept getting put off by the intro music because the theme song on just the first episode made me think this was going to be a super light detective series. I finally watched this whole series recently and really liked it. After the first episode there is no silly theme music or any intro. This is a well balanced detective crime drama with good personal interaction between the cops.
Caroline Quentin and Ian Kelsey have good chemistry together and their characters are very believable. Detectives Butchers and Shap are well developed characters along the way. The show seemed to just be hitting it's stride before it was canceled.
Many of the plots seemed more original than most. The forensics aspect was not particularly interesting in this series but adequate and realistic.
This is definitely worth watching.
Caroline Quentin and Ian Kelsey have good chemistry together and their characters are very believable. Detectives Butchers and Shap are well developed characters along the way. The show seemed to just be hitting it's stride before it was canceled.
Many of the plots seemed more original than most. The forensics aspect was not particularly interesting in this series but adequate and realistic.
This is definitely worth watching.
What does this show want to be?
tsah-905328 April 2020
It's virus isolation time and we're in the market for another British crime series when we happen upon Blue Murder. Decent rating in IMDB so let's give it a try. What is this? There's a real murder in the first few minutes and occasionally they seem serious about it, but the most of the time it wanders into bad sitcom territory without a laugh track. I really enjoyed Barney Miller decades ago, but didn't expect to run into it again in a homicide incarnation. Another total turn off is a sound track that feels completely wrong for a show like this. Some kind of upbeat jazz that is played very loudly. Again, it feels like the soundtrack from an American 90's sitcom has been layered on this British murder mystery. We sat through the first episode, but won't watch the concluding second episode. We don't care who did it and the characters didn't interest us enough watch them stumble to the answer.
Horrible acting
celts1-623-79638228 August 2021
Really Bad
pilot100915 October 2023
I have no idea what the show was trying to portray but it failed to entertain at the first step. I really cannot see a DCI with 3 kids and 1 on the way running a team as displayed. The show is neither comedy or drama, neither realistic or fantasy, its just a mess with this woman at the centre . It seems to play to the Jonathan Creek model that made Caroline Q well known but just is so overdone that it is IMHO unwatchable. The writing is really so "over the top" in terms of potraying a DCI with issues at home and in her marriage (don't all these dectective series seem to have the same central character) that it just becomes silly. Not recommended unless you are desparate.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
